At one time, Stickmen were only used by flash developers under limitations, technical or artistic. With the release of the Xiao Xiao series, however, the aesthetics’s obvious uses in maskingcaused it to evolve beyond enforced simplicity. With the popularity of XKCD, it might be said that stick figures have entered a bit of an internet renaissance. Stick RPG 2 fits quite well into said resurgence and just might be the best Stickman game ever… Yeah, that’s somewhat of a limited genre, but it would be a fine casual RPG regardless of its art-style: there’s just so much to do. SRPG2 will more than please fans of the first and should appeal to those encountering the series for the first time.

There are a few points where the SRPG2 is… sticky: For one, the game map is so huge that there is quite a steep learning curve in just figuring out where everything is. Isometric perspectives can be beautiful, but tend to be be a little difficult to navigate, and StickRPG2 is no exception. It doesn’t help that the world map being more than a little cluttered: there are many buildings you can’t enter, and even more that start out locked. Perhaps they will be filled (and glitches fixed) in the promised updates, perhaps not. In any case, the fact that the world is filled with enough content to get lost in, is both a pro and a con. Finally, the fact that you must have an XGen account to save is tolerable, but annoying.

Note: While the basic complete game is available for free online, a special director’s cut with full-screen offline play, a full length soundtrack, cheat codes aplenty, exclusive updates and a one month pass to the Stick Arena Lab (w/exclusive character head) is available for sale on the main XGen site.